


Copycat

by neverchill



Category: Heroes And Halfwits, Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: AU, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 05:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverchill/pseuds/neverchill
Summary: A lone Kenku follows our idiots. Mogar may or may not kind of fall for him.





	1. Approach

**Author's Note:**

> do people seriously not fanfic for h&h??? holy shit. well, here it is, the traditional mavin but with a modern dnd twist.
> 
> Kenku Gavin is sentient, by the way. People play and describe Kenku in different ways, but in this AU, they're intelligent and understand language, they just don't have one of their own.
> 
> Gabbin sort of retcons Quark, along with some other incidents, which might get explained later.
> 
> Also: Dialogue-heavy. All my fics are dialogue-heavy as hell.
> 
> Extra note: Bold words are words "Gabbin" picks up from Mogar, just so it's easier to see that Gabbin is definitely using Mogar's own words, and not coming up with them.

"It's following us."

"I know, just ignore it."

"What if it tries to pick my pockets?"

"Bo, you have no valuables."

"My lute!"

"It's a bird, it doesn't want your lute."

"Birds like shiny things. I just got done re-staining it."

"Make Mogar talk to it, he'll show it who's boss."

"Oh, yeah. Mogar'll make is disappear."

Both of Mogar's fists clench at his sides as he prays for a sign, some kind of image, something - something to show him that violence is not the way to get these two dunderheads to stop talking about him like he doesn't exist.

Bo lays a thin-fingered hand on the dragonborn's shoulder, "Hey, big boy."

Mogar's sign doesn't come in time. He lashes around and grabs at Bo's throat, only to miss and grab his shirt collar as he stumbles backwards. It's enough, though - enough to wipe the stupid smile off the bard's face. Mogar squints, frill rising.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Albus takes a few steps forward, but doesn't make the same mistake as Bo - he just raises his hands, innocently, and gives Mogar a reassuring smile, "Chill, it's fine, we just want you to take care of our... tag-along." He jabs a thumb toward the path they've already covered, and Mogar turns to look.

There, standing about thirty feet down the path, is a single kenku. It blinks. Mogar recognizes him, vaguely. He's fairly sure that he's the Kenku who had squawked in his ear when they first met, stabbed one of his friends on accident, and made a few potshots at the slime that had almost murdered his scaly ass. It's easily recognizable - kenku don't normally have eyes with such a bright blue undertone, and unlike the others, he wears chain-mail over his leather and a tawny-cream scarf about his neck, adorned with black feathers. Mogar assumes they aren't his own, but they... might be? The paladin drops Bo to the floor and moves to the back of the party to speak to the creature. Albus happily skips over Bo's crumpled form and leaves them to it.

" **Hey**." Mogar raises a hand and waves, politely, albeit awkward.

"Hey." The kenku raises a hand and waves, politely, albeit awkward.

Mogar has the feeling that it doesn't necessarily understand him or anything - it's just mimicking his every movement and word. It's supported by the fact that when the Kenku greets him, it uses his own gravelly voice, with the same tone and inflection. It's like looking into a pool of water or a plane of ice.

Mogar huffs and crosses his arms. The kenku does the same, minus the gruff sigh. It kicks a leg out to balance on and blinks, expectantly.

"You're **following** us." He finally says, glowering. The kenku seems unafraid and croaks a squawk before repeating, in Mogar's voice, "Following."

"Great, sure. Why?"

"Following."

This is more frustrating than he had thought it would be initially. "Sure. Why are you following us?"

Squawk.

"Fucking christ, okay, fine - new question." He raises a hand to his face and rubs his chin spikes, "What's your name?" If he can't get an answer out of him, maybe he can diplomat this thing out.

The kenku chirrs, squawks, and then makes a sound that's vaguely like a bar full of people talking, complete with shuffling and clinking glasses.

"...Is **that** **your name**?"

"That name." It sounds funny, since in Mogar's original sentence, 'that' and 'name' had not been together, so the inflection is mismatched, but it gets the point across. He makes the noise again - chirr, squawk, banter.

" **I can't make** that **noise**."

The kenku is silent for a second, and then condenses his name into just the very end of the bar scene - just indiscriminate voices layered atop each other, and then watches the dragonborn expectantly.

"...I can't make that noise, either. It's just a buncha people talking. I'm **only** **one person**."

He tries again, cutting the noise down to just a short moment without shuffling or clinking - just fuzzy sounds of gruff voices. He seems to be putting emphasis on the foreground noises, like he expects Mogar to be able to replicate this better. It is slightly easier of a quest, but it... Doesn't make any sense. There are no words in there, just noises. Mogar furrows his scaly brow and makes a face.

"...Can I just call you 'Talking'? Because That's pretty much what your name is."

The kenku squawks in denial and makes a movement with his hands.

"...I'm not calling you that. I literally can't. You **have to pick** a word. **You're** making this very difficult. What about... Talking? Mumbling?"

Squawk.

"Uhhh... Conversing?"

Squaaawk.

"Fighting? Canoodling? **Gabbing**?"

"Gabbing?"

Mogar blinks. He had mostly said those as jokes, but the kenku repeats  _gabbing_ like he enjoys it.

" **Gabbing**." He repeats, to give the kenku something to work off of.

"Gabbing." He says, lowering his hands and nodding.

"That's a **stupid** name."

"You're stupid."

Mogar is taken aback by that, as it's his own voice, mixed into an insult, but it makes him crack a grin. He laughs and takes a step back toward his caravan, which is slowly disappearing into the wood. "Fine, you can follow us, just make yourself useful." Mogar pulls his pack down off his shoulder and hands it to the kenku, "Hold your end of the bargain, **Gabbin** '."

His bag is mostly broken and requires being held in a very specific way to keep everything from pouring out a hole in the bottom, so it's a weight and a thought off Mogar's mind when Gabbin takes it and holds it over his shoulder instead and nods.

~

 Mogar and Bor have a pretty tight relationship, in that they're the only members of their shoddy little caravan that actually believe in the one true Lord, and therefore, they kind of get along just by principle. They both believe the strict holy word, and have pretty similar outlooks on things - not on this. Not at all.

Bor throws a  _fit_ that Gabbin had come back with him.

Long, unhappy story made short: Bor tells him off, Mogar does some yelling, and then Gabbin and Mogar are forced to sleep on the outer circle of the camp.

Monsters aren't a big deal. Mogar can handle a monster. He can handle himself and lives in the frost, so being far from the flickering fire isn't too big of an issue. But for Gabbin, the darkness is blinding and the cold is debilitating. At least he has some claws and a shortbow on him to make him feel not so bad. And a dragon-friend. That helps.

Mogar can't make a fire to save his life, being a frost dragon, but as soon as everyone in the camp stops singing and drinking and laughing and throwing things at each other, he stokes the fire back up and invites Gabbin to sit across from him on the other side of the lopsided pit. The kenku does, and sets his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. His beak is nestled into his scarf and his eyes are still open wide, beady, a blue-green color he's never seen before, reflections dancing from the yellow of the fire. He opens his hands with taloned fingers and warms them. Mogar watches him, uninterested in the warmth or light the fire provides.

"So," he starts, his voice low and gravelly, "We're gonna try something, **okay** , bud?"

"Okay."

"Okay. Um. I guess I'll just lay down some **words** , or something, and you can just use those to answer me."

Gabbin chitters.

"So, here, wordbox answers: yes, no, I don't know."

Gabbin tilts his head like he doesn't understand the phrases out of a context. Mogar persists.

"Are you going to go home?"

Gabbin stares.

"I just want to **know** if you are going to go home, or if you're going to **stay** with me, and my asshole friends."

"Stay."

Mogar nods, "So, **no** , you're not going home."

"No."

He has more complicated questions to ask, but he can't think of a way to allow Gabbin to answer them. How long does he remember words? Will, eventually, he just learn all the Common words there are to know, and then be able to talk? Has he never met someone who spoke Common? How is he picking up the meanings so fast, if not?

"You understand me when I talk, right? You're not **just picking words to say**?"

"Just picking words to say?" Then Gabbin makes a quiet chittering noise again and shakes his head. "No."

Mogar realizes that he's laughing. That's his laugh. And that he's fucking with him. He totally understands him - or, at least, well enough to be able to listen to the words he's saying and find a meaning.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No." Chitter.

"Can you **speak Common**?"

Gabbin stops and stares, again, for a long time, and then Michael realizes that in the inky blackness of his eyes, the kenku isn't staring at him, he's looking up into the sky.

"Okay,  **it's complicated** , I guess?"

Gabbin nods. "No."

"The word you're looking for is **'yeah', dude**."

"Yeah, dude." Gabbin laughs again and tilts his head to the side like he's examining Mogar, head to toe. Mogar studies him back for a while before he gets bored and begins to roll the log on the fire to get it to go back down faster. He's ready to just go to bed.

"Why don't you just... use other people's voices, and talk to me in full sentences?"

"It's complicated."

This makes Mogar laugh, this time. He shakes his head. "Whatever. Do you need a sleeping bag? It'll keep you warm. I don't need to be warm."

Gabbin gives him that empty-eyed look and he's not sure if the kenku even heard him, much less understood him. He starts to talk again, but Gabbin nods, "Yeah, dude," and then pauses, and after a second of prolonged thought, says, "Sorriiiieeee." In a long bird whistle - but it's still, very clearly, meant as an apology. Mogar stands and digs through his bag at his feet.

"Don't worry about it. Like I said, I don't need to be warm."

"You know I can't make your noise."

Mogar looks up with a start, surprised at the sentence the other has strung together. It's all in Mogar's own voice, but picked apart and mechanical, but it makes... some sense? "Yeah, dude, I can tell."

"I have to pick only one person."

"I know a little about kenku, and I don't think that's how you work."

Gabbin stands as well and comes nearer to the dragonborn, who's heart beats a little faster and his adrenaline pumps a little harder - he holds the sleepingbag away from him and scowls, eyes glowing in the dark, "No, you have to tell me what's going on. Use whoever's voice you need to do it, I don't care."

"Can't speak Common? Know words following words. It's complicated." Mogar stares for a little longer, but finally, when his heart doesn't calm down, shoves the bag into the kenku's arms and pushes him back toward the outskirts of their camp. "Get the fuck going, we can't be waking up any of these racists."

Gabbin chitters, getting louder as they walk further out into the forest, and Mogar doesn't feel too bad about giving up his sleeping bag if it means Gabbin laughs the whole way to their sleeping place.


	2. Intermission 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mogar thinks too hard about his new Kenku friend. He's never thought this hard about anything, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Multi-Chapter, now. Woohoo. Mostly somewhat linear drabbles and short stories with Intermissions between.

Gabbin works with words the way smart people work with numbers, Mogar concludes.

"Hey, so, I **have** a question." Their idle conversation continues while Mogar's head buzzes beyond.

"Yeah, dude." Gabbin takes a running leap over a fallen log and chitters.

He makes word equations. That's the best way Mogar can try to understand it. He's not sure if Gabbin would say the same, or explain it similarly, but it's the best he has to go on, and it's his leading theory, other than 'he can speak Common and just chooses to do this dumb mockingbird thing to annoy me'.

"Why did you and your buddies **hate** those Kobolds **so** **much**?"

He has some background knowledge. He's implied it before, and sometimes, he'll occasionally use a word with an inflection slightly different than the original - mostly in phrases that he's heard Mogar use in many ways, such as "Yeah, dude," and "Yeah, dude?".

"Don't know?"

"No, **I** don't know." Mogar steps over the log, and Gabbin shakes his head and shoves him back over it. He maintains his footing, but is now back on the other side of the fallen tree. 

He listens to sentences, and uses them as equations. And when he knows these equations to be true, he can then use them for the purpose they had been used before, to find the same variable with the same inputs.

"Don't know."

"Oh, yeah, right. Uh, well, **better** question, do Kobold **hurt** your little clan, regularly, or something? Kidnap babies? Steal food?" Mogar makes some motions with his arms, like fighting, and then rocking a baby, and then eating. He's found that Gabbin doesn't pay any attention to body language and has been trying to teach him some.

"I have hurt." He gives Mogar a blank look. Mogar shrugs. Gabbin shrugs right back at him. Mogar isn't sure that Gabbin understands what it means.

"You hurt them, or **they** hurt **you**?"

"I hurt you."

" **No** , you didn't."

As quick as Gabbin is to catch on to most things, there are equations that Mogar presents to him that he has never seen before. Big numbers, or strange numbers, or combinations of them he hasn't worked with. He tries to approach them in the same way, but without practiced nuance, he gets them wrong sometimes.

"I hurt I? No, no, I hurt buddies. They don't hate so much your. I?" Mogar pauses. Gabbin continues, "I don't know, dude."

Mogar huffs a little bit of a laugh and is about to step back over the log when Gabbin shoves him and points at it.

"Better, hey."

"You want me to **do it** better? Like you did, you **fucking nerd**?"

"You're a fucking nerd. Do it better."

But really, he's a genius. Mogar can tell. Deep down in there, he's trying so hard, and he's doing so well, learning all the properties of language-math. He can hold conversations fairly well in Common, and perks up to his 'name' in Draconic, as well as the word "explosion", which is a different inflection of the same word that means "roar, loud, or incessant speech", which Mogar has taken to using when speaking Draconic and referring to Gabbin.

Gabbin also knows the words for "shit", "fuck", and "friend", but Mogar doesn't speak it often enough near him for him to really begin to put it together.

"Do it better."

Mogar groans and sighs and takes a few steps back, and then he jumps a surprising height and lands with a thud. "Was that better enough?"

Gabbin stares at him. He's yet to figure out what tiny changes in facial expression denote which emotions in Kenku, since their eyes are not so expressive, nor are their beaks, noses, or ears, all things that most races use to communicate, bar humans, dwarves, and halflings, whose ears have no movement. And so, he just stares back at him, until Gabbin raises a taloned hand and gives him a thumbs-up, except it's sort of cock-eyed. Mogar grabs his hand and turns it right-side-up and then gives him a thumbs-up back to him in turn, a grin on his face.

It's impressive, the things Gabbin is doing, with no reason to. No reason to follow, no reason to endure the abuse, no reason to struggle to learn a fluent language that's so differently structured from the way he's communicated all his life.

It's admirable. Mogar is jealous.


	3. Intermission 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mogar can't fucking believe he hasn't thought about this before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait. season 2 episodes get long as fuuuuhck, and I do have to kinda be up to date to get some new materials and not go completely off-canon, you know?
> 
> also, heavy in canon here. bringing in some of the retcons i've made. if you don't listen to it, well. this is just a dreamy overview of their journeys and such. it doesn't need to make a whole lot of sense.

Lately, Mogar has been trying to pick out details of memories that he's previously tried to shove down past the bottled neck of his brain. It sucks that he's so damn good at forgetting things, because now, he actually sort of cares about what he could salvage, should he have cared at all in the beginning. He tries, and doesn't get very far.

But, as he's falling asleep, one arm with Gabbin's feathered head resting on it, blocking his smaller body from the light breeze that creeps over the open grass, images begin to form, and his heart rate picks up just in time to slow to a crawl as he falls into dreams.

When he dreams, they're less of the crazy bloodbaths he normally conjures up and more of... retellings.

-

It's dark all around him, and water is sloshing below. It's sickening. Normally he doesn't get seasick, as shown by the fact he'd laughed his ass off at Albus for months as he heaved over the edge of their warship on the way to Jackalheart, but there's something about the fact that he's constantly moving in total inky blackness that fucks with his body. His brain is moving, but his body isn't telling it to, and his eyes can't explain why. His ears try, but all he gets are snippets of garbled dialogue between his companions, and the occasional mental image of abstract concepts. Telepathic communication gives him headaches anyway, and paired with the torture of motion illness, he'd been easily frustrated and violent. Insomniatic.

He's not sure if it's an actual memory or if it's been tainted with the things happening in real life, but as he's leant over the edge of the boat, which is much too large to be  _pop-chik-pop_ _-chik_ 's dinghy, a scaly hand rests on his shoulder. Mogar shoves it off, only for Albus' voice to come to his ear, "Bird!"

He's about to raise an arm - and for a moment, in his mind's eye, he sees a flash of light and his own form lift and swing a clawed hand at the creature, which, when filled in with his dream's coloring-book assumptions, is Gabbin - but he feels another wave of sickness wash over him and he falls weak against the wooden paneling again, as cold, clammy hands pat his back.

-

His eyes blink open for a moment. The familiar sight of fireflies fills his blurred vision and, for a second, he's in Einland, and nothing is different. Everything is fine. He falls back asleep again.

-

This time he's in a busy bazaar. People mill around, wearing colors too bright for his eyes to comprehend, being made mostly for dull golden and slate blue of the mountains. Carrying tiny weapons at their waists - miniature shields, warhammers, and crossbows. For some reason, his foggy mind makes him afraid of their daggers, afraid of the way they make people burst into inexplicable, all-devouring flame. Someone is talking to him. He turns. It's Orma's voice this time, coming from the beak of a Kenku that he doesn't recognize.

"Get some fancy clothes. Fit in. High-rollers."

He realizes, as Gabbin speaks to him, that he doesn't recognize him because he's dressed in vibrant silks and high boots. There's a veil over his face and golden rings in the skin of his nostrils at the base of his beak.

Mogar jams his hands into his pockets and turns, watching Na, Bor, Albus, and Orma take a wrong turn down the line of carts selling goods. He wants to tell them that they're going the wrong way, but they're already gone. Bo is playing his lute and walking backwards through a parting crowd in the opposite direction, a burning building behind him for a split second before the flames morph into a huge, monstrous, pink-and-yellow building, with domes with points on the ends, pillars made of marble, and black-and-red squares painting the windows.

He sees himself at the counter, taking his silver greatsword, looking it over, and locking it away. He's trying to talk, but his voice is too quiet, and Bo is staring at him. Gabbin is staring from the other side, he can feel it, but he's too nervous, and he can't care about what Gabbin is doing. The voice comes again, from behind the mirror, "Are you here to do this establishment harm?"

Bo speaks deliberately.

"No. If that's what my fortune may bring, so be it."

Gabbin speaks in Bo's voice, but Mogar can't take his eyes off of his own reflection. "No. If that's what my fortune may bring, so be it."

All he has to say is that line, and speak it without fault, but it stings his insides and gets caught in his throat.

"Please forgive my guard, good sir. He's a simple, dull man..."

"Simple, dull man." Gabbin says, chitters. Lays a hand on top of Mogar's.

Mogar is plunging the head of a spear into a woman's back while Gabbin is on the floor, rolling away from the stab of a casino security member with expert precision until he's not. He squawks in pain. Mogar twists the spear. The drow woman in front of him screams and goes down, blood pooling on the floor. Her blood spreads in an oblong circle. Gabbin has it all over him as he scrambles to his feet, using Bo as a handhold on the way up. Shiva's fire blinds him for a moment, but when he opens his eyes, Gabbin is unaffected, despite being wide-eyed and terrified.

"Holy shit." It was Mogar's voice he had used that time, but Mogar's dreaming brain doesn't understand how to fix that, so it comes out as gibberish, instead.

He's used so many voices.

-

When he opens his eyes again, the fireflies are thin, but still around. They're a greenish color. In Einland, they were a warm rosegold. He blinks until his vision is clear, and he can see that these fireflies are also longer, with big proboscis-like mouthparts, and large. Frighteningly large. He sits up. Gabbin is no longer on his arm. Instead, he's looking over a lightly wooded area in front of a low, stout cave, with gargoyles sitting upside-down like bats from the upper lip. The firefly nearest him that he's been examining rears its head back and plunges its proboscis into his chest.

-

"Bugs?"

The fact that it's Mogar's own voice snaps him out of sleep, head pounding, ears flapping, claws raking at the grass.

"Bugs! Bugs? Bugs. Mogar?"

He sits up with a start and wheezes, turning to look at Gabbin, who's a tawny color in the reddish morning light, his eyes greenish, now. Weird. Weren't they blue?

"What bugs? Where? Why **are you saying 'bugs'**?"

"You are saying bugs."

"No, I'm not. Or, well, okay, I said it twice just then."

"No, you are saying bugs. Question?"

"...I don't know what you're talking about. **In my sleep**?"

"In my sleep, you are saying bugs."

"In  ** _your_** sleep."

Gabbin takes a second to analyze this, and then nods. "In your sleep, your are saying bugs."

Mogar snorts and laughs and shoves his shoulder, to which Gabbin chitters, low and sort of nervous, and then leans into his chest as Mogar lowers his arm.

Gabbin is stupid, he decides, overwriting his previous opinion of him. Stupid.


End file.
